Summer wedding number 2 guest dress

Tonight I give you another very gorgeous By Hand London Flora dress. This is a dress which I made in super fast time to wear to a very special wedding in August last year. It was like real life Great British Sewing Bee!! I try to avoid making things in a rush to a deadline, because it kind of takes the enjoyment of sewing away… I guess it can become a bit of a chore. But with this dress I didn’t mind at all. I made this in a few days (evenings only) and was just a weeny bit proud of myself!

I figured that if I was rushing a dress then I ought to follow a pattern which was familiar to me. I had just made a Flora dress for a wedding earlier in August, so it made sense to make another one.

So to start the project… the fun task of fabric shopping! I knew I wanted a nice lightweight fabric – probably slightly lighter than the Flora I made before. So I opted for a gorgeous Cloud 9 voile from the Palos Verdes range, called Miraleste – bought online from M is for Make. Shipping was very fast – which was ideal seeing that I was under massive time constraints!

Pattern pieces were very quick to knock up, as I already had them cut out from the last dress – including the adjustment to the back to stop gaping.

I had a minor punch up with the invisible zip – and have to say that this tutorial on the By Hand London website was an absolute lifesaver! I think I ended up in a straggle because I was rushing so much. But I got there eventually!

Because the voile is lovely and lightweight, it is that tiny bit sheer and see-though. And I didn’t really want to scare other wedding guests(!), so decided to line the dress fully. I just used an ivory poplin from John Lewis, which worked beautifully.

I also decided to shorten the back of this dress. The pattern gives quite a deep dipped (not to be confused with deeply dippy – god bless you Right Said Fred) hem circle skirt. But I wanted to alter that for this dress, just to have it slightly different!

I was really so pleased with the finished dress. The fabric was a pleasure to wear!

Anyway, enough from me! Here are photos so you can see for yourselves 🙂